


There's a Lot of Love in This Place

by prettyasadiagram



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 04:23:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4691948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyasadiagram/pseuds/prettyasadiagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know, when I said I’d be happy to take on your honey-do list, this is not what I had in mind.” Jim tucks his hands in his pockets and looks vaguely bemused.  “This is not good, Bones.”</p>
<p>Leonard scowls. “You think?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's a Lot of Love in This Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thatdamneddame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamneddame/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, thatdamneddame!!! You deserve this and so much more (and at some point a physical gift will be headed your way). You're my favorite and I miss you :( 
> 
> Note that this isn't betaed so all mistakes are my own. Feel free to point out typos and other errors.

For the record, Leonard isn’t completely useless around the house, no matter what Chapel or his mother or his ex-wife say. He cooks; he cleans; he hangs shelves and unclogs toilets as needed. He is not, however, at all prepared for or capable of dealing with water leaking from his second floor guest bathroom and collapsing into his goddamn kitchen, which is what he comes home to one morning after an exhausting rotation.

Leonard spares a brief moment to be glad he had an overnight shift and can deal with this problem in daylight, before pulling out his phone to call Jim.

Then he goes hunting for the main water valve, cursing every watery step of the way.

 

+++

 

Leonard met Jim two years ago when he wanted to renovate his master bathroom. Chapel had given him Jim’s number, said he was the best and most irritating contractor she had ever worked with.

She was right on both counts.

One month later, Leonard had heated tiles, gorgeous new windows providing a hideous amount of natural light, an obscenely large shower stall with waterproof speakers, and a new best friend who insisted on calling him “Bones” for reasons better left unexplored.

Three months after that, when he complained that Jim wouldn’t leave him alone now, always coming over and fixing random things and eating all of Leonard’s snacks, Chapel had just laughed in his face and went off to do her rounds, calling over her shoulder, “Try not to look so smitten when you say that, Len.”

He had spluttered indignantly and tried to ignore how knowingly Chapel looked at him for the rest of the day. It didn’t work.

(OK, he’ll deny his feelings to Chapel until he’s blue in the face, but Leonard dares anyone to spend a significant amount of time with Jim—much less time with Jim in a tight gray henley doing manual labor—without developing some sort of feelings for him. It’s impossible. His biceps are indecent and he even sweats like some sort of Greek god. And those goddamn baby blues.)

 

+++

 

“You know, when I said I’d be happy to take on your honey-do list, this is not what I had in mind.” Jim tucks his hands in his pockets and looks vaguely bemused. “This is not good, Bones.”

Leonard scowls. “You think?”

The mess in front of them is pretty atrocious. The ceiling over the kitchen is completely gone and there’s a good two inches of water lapping at their feet. Leonard mostly wants to curl up on his bed and cry, but he’s not sure just how stable the second floor is. He kicks despondently at a piece of ceiling that’s floated over to them.

“On the bright side, you did say you wanted to renovate your kitchen.”

Leonard turns to stare at Jim. “This is not at all how I pictured getting that started. There were more HGTV marathons, for one.”

Jim shrugs. “Eh, you know: life, lemons, etc. We’ll get you a bitchin’ kitchen, Bones. Don’t you worry.”

Resisting the urge to claw at his face, Leonard sighs. “I wasn’t worried until you said ‘bitchin.’’”

 

+++

 

For the first year of his friendship with Jim, Leonard fields a truly ridiculous number of invasive questions from Chapel regarding what base he’s gotten to with Jim. Leonard isn’t quite sure how to tell Chapel that he’s not in high school and no longer uses bases as measuring posts for a relationship, but it doesn’t matter because she doesn’t believe him anyway.

It’s all lighthearted until Chapel finally realizes that he _isn’t_ joking and that _nothing_ is happening between him and Jim, no matter how much Leonard wants something to be happening. Then she just looks at him with this sad expression and buys him a beer and tells him he’s an idiot. 

Business as usual.

 

+++

 

Leonard’s life, in the immediate aftermath, is one long headache of filing insurance claims, dealing with insurance agents, and talking Jim down from his suggestion to install some sort of easy-access cooking torch in case Leonard feels the need to make a stupid amount of crème brûlée.

After receiving an email with increasingly concerning kitchen ideas, Leonard calls Jim’s office, hoping to steer him away from whatever madness has possessed him to think that Leonard is at all interested in some sort of concrete wine cooler embedded in his countertop. 

Gaila answers the phone in a tone that makes Leonard wince. “Leonard! Will you _please_ tell Jim that ‘Kirk Constructing: We’ll nail anything!’ is a terrible business slogan.” There’s some background noise like a scuffle and then Jim’s breathless voice comes on the line saying, “No way—it’s totally fun! And attention grabbing!” There’s a squawk and a clatter, and then neither of them is paying attention to the phone anymore.

Leonard listens to them bicker and checks his watch. He should have just stuck with email. A big red “NO” in seventy-two point font generally gets the message across.

 

+++

 

Sometimes, usually when he is coming off a grueling shift and needs something to keep him awake for the drive home, Leonard lets himself think about the one time he and Jim kissed. 

Just one brief kiss at Uhura's Christmas party and then Jim had pulled back, looked vaguely horrified, and stumbled off mumbling about eggnog and pushing Spock off a balcony. Leonard had leaned back against the wall, hand coming up to brush at his lips, and then promptly gone off in search of more eggnog that ended up being more rum than nog.

Neither of them had mentioned the kiss the next morning, and that was that.

 

+++

 

Insurance offers to comp him a hotel room for the duration of the renovation, but Leonard refuses. His room wasn’t damaged and they’ll have to lobotomize him before he trades sleeping on his perfect mattress for whatever crap they offer in hotel rooms.

Chapel offers her couch, but Leonard is too damn old to spend a night on shifting springs like he’s in his twenties.

Jim offers his guest room, but Leonard knows that if he sees Jim in his natural space, sleep rumpled and warm, then his crush that he’s been harboring will never die. He tries not to think about the flash of hurt that comes over Jim’s face when Leonard awkwardly says no thanks.

Chapel calls him an idiot when he tells her Jim offered. Leonard doesn’t disagree, exactly.

The first night he gets about three hours of sleep, maybe. The sound of dripping and things shifting keeps him awake, wondering if new parts of his house are falling to pieces. He must mercifully pass out at some point, because he flounders awake to his alarm the next morning with no idea what’s going on. His eyes feel like sandpaper and never before has he hated Nina Simone’s voice so much. 

Things look worse in the morning light and Leonard, staring at the wreck of his kitchen, miserably eats a bowl of dry cereal. His beautiful, beautiful kitchen. He tries to console himself by thinking of how nice the renovation will be, but it’s hard to picture double ovens and a farmhouse sink when everything in front of you is damp, dirty, and starting to smell.

Of course, this is when Jim decides to make his presence known by clapping a hand on Leonard’s shoulder. The resulting shriek is totally manly, no matter what Jim says. 

 

(Chapel eyes him knowingly when he stumbles into the hospital later that morning. “Told you to go to a hotel. Or to finally give in and let Jim ravish you. You look like shit, Len.”

He scowls and ignores her.)

 

+++

 

One evening Chapel kidnaps him after work. 

She settles him on an irritatingly wobbly stool across from Uhura, and when Chapel shares a smug grin with Uhura, he knows that nothing good can come from this unholy alliance. He braces himself for a neverending supply of cosmos and invasive and embarrassing questions, and they do not disappoint.

Uhura smiles at him in what he supposes could be interpreted as friendly, but there’s just a bit too much teeth. “How are you holding up? Still staying in the house?” 

“Why, you going to offer me your spare room as well?” he asks.

“Nope. I quite like Spock in one piece and you two not sharing a living space will help keep him that way.”

Leonard nods. She has a good point. Thankfully, Chapel comes over with drinks and places two stupidly pink cocktails right in front of him. She and Uhura have pints of beer and he doesn’t even try to pretend like he’s not glaring. He knows that it won’t get him anything other than a drink with an umbrella in it. 

Ostensibly, they’re asking pleasant, friendly question about insurance policies and what caused the whole thing, but he knows they’re just waiting until he’s tipsy before going in for the kill. This is not his first time in this bar with these women and being handed these ridiculous drinks. But if they want to pay eight bucks a cocktail for him to tell them that his love life is still a barren wasteland, who is he to stand in their way. 

Still, Leonard drinks as fast as he can to numb the embarrassing questions he knows are coming. He’s just starting to feel the alcohol when Chapel says, “So, I was just telling Uhura that Jim has offered to be your sugar daddy for a while.”

It only gets worse from there. There are some frankly inaccurate _Pretty Woman_ comparisons, a horrible amount of depraved pickup lines that Leonard could use, and an unending parade of cocktails whose colors get more and more neon and alarming.

By the end of the night Leonard is definitely slurring but still defending his virtue. The last thing he remembers is standing up indignantly and saying, “There has been _no_ plundering of _these_ fields.” 

He’s pretty sure he regrets everything. He’s also pretty sure that the bartender now thinks he’s a virgin.

 

+++

 

The next morning is just cruel. There’s sunlight and somehow he’s in his own bed and there’s a text on his phone from Chapel that reads:

_Remember to thank Jim for getting you home!_

Leonard is positive he is still drunk and it’s only seven. He texts Chapel back:

_You’re dead to me._

 

+++

 

Jim is indeed downstairs, looking rumpled and like everything Leonard could ever ask for. He is also carrying a McDonald’s bag that smells divine. 

The inadvertent whine Leonard lets out at the smell of grease and coffee is downright embarrassing, but it makes Jim turn to smile at him like he’s the fucking sun, so Leonard will table his desire to melt into the floor until a later time. 

 

(Although Jim swears Leonard didn’t do or say anything he should be ashamed of, Leonard knows how he gets when he’s drunk and he knows that Chapel and Uhura definitely would have egged him on before calling Jim, so there’s a high chance that Leonard groped him, professed his love, called him something utterly ridiculous and over-the-top Southern, or all of the above. 

Jesus fucking Christ, he’s never drinking again.)

 

+++

 

At some point, Leonard knows, he should really say something to Jim. Or pass him a note reading, “Do you like me? Check ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” since that’s about the maturity level of this potential relationship.

(Burgeoning, Chapel calls it, and everything in Leonard wants to curl up and die.)

Instead, he gets dinner with Jim and argues about backsplash patterns and how big the kitchen island should be, and does his best not to accidentally try to hold Jim’s hand.

So far it’s working out fine.

 

+++

 

They’ve been going over specific details for the last hour— 

“Stainless steel appliances?”

“Of course.”

“Soapstone countertops? Nonporous, very heat resistant, classy as hell.”

“Sure.”

 

“And finally, you saying yes to polished concrete floors?”

“You’re a goddamn nightmare, Jim. Don’t you dare give me polished concrete floors. Who the hell even asks for that?”

—and Leonard can feel his brain turning to mush. He puts his head down on Jim’s desk, closes his eyes, and says, “I think I can still hear those fans, Jim. They’re haunting me.” 

On any other occasion, the hand sort of petting through his hair would make him flinch back, but he is so tired and honestly it feels very, very nice.

In a low voice, Jim says, “I wasn’t kidding when I offered my spare room, Bones. You want it; it’s yours. Just say the word.”

When Leonard finally brings himself to sit up and look at him, the expression on Jim’s face makes Leonard glad he’s never been prone to blushing. As it is, it makes him fidget and wonder if maybe Chapel isn’t as crazy as he thought. 

 

+++

 

Leonard makes it two more weeks before he really does start hearing the low drone of industrial fans wherever he goes and knows that he needs to get out of his house before he loses his goddamn mind. His thumb hovers over Chapel’s number in his phone for a long minute before scrolls down to Jim’s number. Closing his eyes, he taps lightly and tries not to hang up before Jim answers.

Jim’s surprised, “Bones?” makes him realize how often it is Jim initiating contact. He swallows against the lump in his throat and says, “That guest room offer still good?”

 

+++

 

Turns out Jim at home is a lot like Jim in public: boisterous, prone to losing his shirt, and always moving. It makes something in Leonard’s chest turn over and he has to pretend to examine Jim’s bookshelf so Jim won’t see the stunned look on his face. 

But Jim at home is also quiet, and soft, and sweet. Chipper in the mornings and smiling endearingly at Leonard like his inability to function until after three cups of coffee is the cutest thing Jim has ever seen. Leonard very quickly gets used to coming home after his shifts and arguing with Jim over takeout and whether or not the latest Terminator movie was any good. He gets used to a lot of things about Jim.

Leonard lasts a week before gently backing Jim against the kitchen table and kissing him.

Jim smiles against his mouth and says, “Took you long enough.”

 

+++

 

The kitchen, when it’s finally done, is absolutely beautiful. It’s so much more than the blueprints and mockups that Jim had shown him that it deserves some extra thanks, which is what Leonard uses as an excuse for why his hand is down Jim’s pants when Uhura and Spock show up as planned for his “new kitchen” celebration. 

Sorry, but he’s not sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> Please do not repost this work in its entirety or share this work on third-party websites such as Goodreads


End file.
